It's Taiwan culture

By Goh Sui Noi, The Straits Times, 5 August 2000

President Chen is actively promoting Taiwanese
culture, which he says is distinct from that which exists on the
mainland. This view worries Beijing.

TAIPEI—Drawing a line between Chinese and Taiwanese culture,
President Chen Shui-bian yesterday stressed that Taiwan's culture
was not a frontier Chinese culture, but had its own independent and
self-determining characteristics.

He described the main characteristics of Taiwanese culture as
pluralist, indigenous and international.

Speaking at a culture camp in the southern county of Tainan, the
President pointed out that Taiwanese culture was the root of
Oceanic culture and said that Taiwanese must have confidence in
themselves.

He emphasised cultural development as the most important aspect of
nation-building, adding: We must study how culture can take root
and germinate on this land.

He further urged that past local literature be raised to the status of
representative literature of Taiwan.

The President had also spoken about the development of a Taiwanese
culture in his inauguration speech on May 20, a move that Beijing
feared would steer the island's people further away from mainland
China. He had then spoken about Taiwan's wealth of diversified
cultural elements and the development of the island's local
cultures.

The President, who is from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive
Party, had promoted local Taiwanese culture when he was mayor of
Taipei in 1994-98.

He changed the name of the boulevard in front of the presidential
office from Chieh-shou Road, meaning long life, to Kaitegalan
Boulevard, the name of the first aboriginal tribe to inhabit the
island.

However, this process of stressing separate culture began under the
President's predecessor Lee Teng-hui.

In the final term of his presidency from 1996 to 2000, the fiercely
nationalistic Mr Lee tried to forge what he termed a new
Taiwanese identity, beginning with a change in the school
curriculum to emphasise Taiwanese history, geography and society.

Where in the past, anyone caught not speaking in Mandarin at school
had to pay a fine, the learning of mother tongues, from Hokkien to
Hakka to aboriginal tongues, was subsequently encouraged.